She was a
waitress near Reno when death came for her, in the form of an angrily
hurled, badly aimed spatula. She had never expected to die at the
hands of the fry cook at her humble place of employment, but no one
really expects to die in a greasy diner with half a name off Highway
395. No one really expects to die of cyanide poisoning twenty
thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean, either, but her father had.
She should have guessed that death would not announce itself to her
in quite so courteous a fashion as it did for those people
unfortunate enough to die of heart attacks and gunshot wounds. Her
father's father had suffered the same misfortune, and she herself
suffered a notable lack of brothers upon whom she could bestow this
familial tendency.

The diner in question had, once
upon a time, been called Skinny's. The irony had escaped few people
who knew Buck Fisher, the original cook, whose prodigious weight of
nearly four hundred pounds was entirely the result of delectably
fattening food. Fortunately, not many who ventured through the wide
doors of the aluminum trailer that housed the establishment were
privy to that bit of information. To them, Skinny's was just
another meal on the way to whatever end they were creating for
themselves.

It was old, to be sure, but well
kept enough that renovations weren't strictly necessary. The
linoleum floor, while faded and worn, was intact. The counters were
chipped at the edges and corners, a bit, but were short of run down.
Even the original tin siding was in relatively good condition. The
waitress had a certain affection for the place, in all its antiquity.

The neon sign had weathered badly
through the many years it had welcomed travelers weary of the highway
into the diner's fluorescently illuminated interior. Only three
letters and the apostrophe remained intact. The last S sometimes
flickered to life before particularly vicious thunderstorms, deeming
the would-be rust bucket diner "S in 's." She thought it was a
good enough name for the place, after spending nearly three years of
her relatively young life waiting the Formica tables and plastic
booths. Truckers and loners and stoners came through with big dreams
and small realities, happy to spend the night with a slim, decent
looking waitress. She had never been among the righteously inclined,
and the men were mostly harmless. It was a bearable life.

Lou Baker and his wife had just
left, after socializing over two mugs of black, steaming coffee. The
waitress mostly stayed out of the conversation, but she listened to
the tidbits of gossip regarding Mabel Kerlick and the question of
whether she was sleeping with Kurt Hughes. Personally, the waitress
found it unlikely. Maybe she just didn't want to consider the
possibility of two people, a widow and widower, respectively, having
sex at an age when many of their peers were dead. In any case, she
kept her mouth shut until after the Bakers had paid their tab and
hobbled out. They, too, were getting along in years.

"Do you really think Mabel and
Kurt…" she asked Bernie, who shook his head and winked.

"Annie Baker doesn't know a
thing, sweetheart, but it's easier to let her talk. Smile and nod,
eventually she'll pay up and leave. I can't afford to be running
motor mouths out of here, as much business as we get." A slow day
for the diner was a good day, but somehow it always managed to turn,
if not a profit, enough to live on.

The booths were now empty, the
tables had been wiped down with a not quite clean rag, and Bernie,
the cook in question, was moments from shutting down the griddle for
the night when the cheap jingle bells tied with frayed ribbon to the
front door clamored halfheartedly. The late July heat was brutally
draining, and even the desert seemed to have a tired complexion to
it. The bells had long lost their holiday luster, but never had they
rung so hollowly. Ironically, they reminded her of death.

A sweat stained maroon work shirt
proclaimed the latecomer's name to be Buck, though he conjured no
reminder of the diner's founder. His dirty blonde hair was
unattractively streaked with gray, heavily in places, and a
toothbrush mustache gave him a distinctly unkempt impression.
Gray-brown eyes did nothing to liven up his face. Bernie grumbled
about closing hours before the man was in earshot, but the waitress
immediately felt her nerves grate on edge. Something inexplicable
about his gruffness threatened her, and he hadn't even said a word.

"Watch him for me, will you,
Bernie?" she asked in her sweet Southwestern drawl. Bernie nodded
in acknowledgement, nonchalantly picking up one of the knives arrayed
across the cutting board, cleaned and waiting to have their edges
honed. He glided the blade against a sharpening stone, producing a
metallic rasp that intensified the chill the waitress felt creeping
down the back of her neck. The stranger seemed unfazed.

He sat down heavily on one of the
cracked wooden stools that waited crookedly under the bar, the legs
scuttling across the linoleum with an almost insectile chatter. Both
of his meaty hands found the countertop and rested there lazily, as
if waiting for something to strangle. She tried not to look at his
hands as she fought down the feeling of unease that was sitting quite
solidly in her throat. She failed miserably, but later she would
console herself in the fact that she tried.

"The lights go off in ten
minutes, buddy," Bernie said, knife and sharpening stone held at
ease in his comparatively small hands. She had always thought that
Bernie could stand up to anyone who might pass through the diner, but
doubts were niggling their way to the front of her mind as she
compared the two large men. Bernie worked in a diner, after all, and
his mass was soft and slow. He was a sedentary man, whereas this
newcomer was vaguely muscular and seemingly comfortable with his
size.

She was slender, in a way that
implied a naturally quick metabolism rather than any aspirations of
fitness. Buck, who was currently picking at his teeth with a splinter
of wood he had produced out of his shirt pocket, could probably snap
her spine like a broom handle. She shuddered at the mental image as
she swept the floor, testing the resiliency of the wood between
strokes.

"Got any liquor in this dump?"
Buck asked, his voice as deep and rough as she had expected. She
bristled at his choice of words. Skinny's was by no means a dump.
Outdated and more than a bit worn around the edges, perhaps, but it
was clean enough. She had never heard anyone complain. Her sweeping
picked up a little more fervor as she noticed the dark smudges of
dirt between the linoleum floor tiles. They refused to come loose.

"I'm not looking for anything,"
Buck answered coolly, "least of all trouble. Nothing more than a
question, friend."

"Five minutes." She could hear
the restraint tugging at Bernie's voice.

"I guess I'll have some of that
tap water, then." His accent was subtle and generic, probably faded
from spending so much time between places. Many of the truckers
shared that trait, a confused regional identity forged of too many
nights passed too close to highways.

Bernie pulled a glass from under
the counter and filled it from the kitchen sink. The water sloshed as
he set the glass on the Formica, leaving a ring when Buck picked it
up and glugged heavily. Bernie dragged a damp, stained towel across
the puddle, spreading the mess more than cleaning it. Buck set the
empty glass back down on the streaked counter and stood up. The stool
creaked in appreciation, sliding a few inches backwards to
accommodate his shifting weight.

"I can see that you folks are
eager to be out of this excuse for a swinging joint. I'll be on my
way for the night, I suppose, if you'll tell me what I owe ya."
His prodigious fists clenched and relaxed repeatedly, as if he were
nervous about something. She noticed only because her eyes kept
straying to his hands, and she reminded herself several times that he
wasn't posing any viable threat to her.

"Doesn't seem right to charge
you for a glass of water," Bernie told him, setting down the knife
and stone he had reclaimed after drawing the water. He looked wearier
than she had ever seen him, and she suspected that he was eager just
to get this disconcerting man out of his diner so that he could go
home to his empty trailer. She wanted much the same thing tonight.

"Much obliged," Buck said,
nodding his thanks to Bernie, then to her. His muddy eyes had a hard
gleam that suggested a history of malice, but she knew she was
probably imagining it. She had lived too long among those fleeing
life, and looked for the potential for hurt in everyone. She herself
was fleeing life, in a way, so it didn't surprise her that a little
paranoia had found its way into her emotionally barren existence.

The door swung shut with as much
grace as a wounded cow, bells jangling off tempo. She put the broom
away and untied her apron, looking to Bernie for approval. "Do you
want me to stay for anything?" she asked.

"Everything's packed up and
wiped down, I don't see why you'd need to stick around. Have a
nice night, honey. Get some sleep, for God's sake. If you come in
tomorrow looking that tired, I'll send you straight home and call
Ethel to come in. Thursdays are slow, I'm sure she could handle
it." Ethel was Bernie's sister, who also called everyone below
the age of forty "honey". She had waited tables at Skinny's up
until the day a seventeen year old girl from Crawford, Colorado had
showed up on the morning bus, asking for a job.

She felt bad, some days, for taking
Ethel's job, but the older woman had given it up in an instant.
That had been three years ago, and Ethel still came in to wait tables
whenever she was needed. She was sixty-seven now, Bernie's senior
by fourteen years, but she was still spry.

"I'll try," she promised him,
slipping her apron over her head and stuffing it under the counter.
"See you bright and early."

"I don't know about bright, but
it'll definitely be early."

"Goodnight, Bernie."

"Goodnight."

She closed the door behind her
slowly, bells barely stirring.

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